food halls | Christmas | Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church | Italy

One of the things I've been doing since I was a kid is going to Ka De We. It's basically­ like a department store you'd find anywhere, like Harrods. Then on the top they have the food halls, like they do at Harrods. They have prosciutto from Italy, chocolate, the best you can imagine, and then they have food halls, including this whole area that's only fish. You can get clam chowder, every kind of fish you can think of. And it's all right there. They make the food right there. Then you get a little glass of all the different wines - a different Riesling or Prosecco. I always get the schnitzel - veal that's fried, your traditional German meal. I always have schnitzel and a Riesling.

What if you just want to ­window-shop?
In West Berlin, the famous shopping street is called the Kurfurstendamm. They do the most spectacular Christmas lights there in the wintertime. It goes on and on and on and on, and then they do these big sculptures of animals and Santas. At the end of the Kurfurstendamm, they have the coolest night market [at Christmas]. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church there was bombed, but they left it that way, so it's kind of a monument to having been bombed. They built a really modern church around it, so it's almost like an amazing modern sculpture with this tower sticking out. On that plaza is the best of the night markets - the crowds and the sledding and the hot dog stands and all that kind of stuff.

The night markets are a funny German tradition that happens at Christmastime. As soon as the sun goes down, around five or six o'clock, there are these night markets all over the city that have lights, and they have different stands. They have all these wursts, like the hot dog-wurst-sausage­ places­ where they have curry dogs, ­currywurst, and all these different types of sausages. The night markets have tons of things for kids. I wish I had taken my kids, actually. I didn't think there was going to be anything for them to do in the wintertime. I thought it was going to be dark and difficult.